Flight Centre to provide ‘money coaches’ to struggling staff

By Alexandra Coulton

For a majority of Australians, money is a huge source of stress.

Most of us don’t have enough of it and boy can that really mess up your day.

Particularly if you’re like us and treat pay-wave as fake money.

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That’s why news like this really warms the cockles of our financially unstable hearts.

The money savvy folk over at Flight Centre noticed how much of an affect financial struggles can have on staff and have decided to roll out a new Financial Inclusion Action Plan (FIAP), to help improve the financial resilience of its employees.

The 54-point action plan includes a number of initiatives including access to customised superannuation and insurance products, the rollout of ‘money coaches’ dedicated to financial counselling services for clients in high stress and the adoption of a Financial Stress Indicator to measure and report on overall workplace stress.

Flight Centre’s Financial Literacy and Capability Business Leader, Stacey Beckley, said in a statement that after surveying staff, findings mirror AMP’s Financial Wellness Report of 2016 that suggest financial stress accounts for a 6.9 hour loss in productivity per week.

“The more financially aware we can make our people, the more control they can take of their finances to make smart decisions and avoid getting into unnecessary debt,” Beckley said.

Moneywise has been offered as an internal service to all staff since 1994.

The recent roll-out of money coaches across Australia – 13 in total – is designed to help the travel heavyweight ensure its people have access to financial experts who can provide specialist advice and support to frontline travel agents and support staff.

“Money coaches work with our people to help their financial goals become a reality; visiting stores to provide one-on-one coaching for financial goal setting, cash flow/budgeting, debt reduction and maximising their ability to save.

“They also attend Welcome Aboard sessions for new starters so from day one, all our people understand the services and support offered by our Moneywise team,” Beckley said.

Flight Centre is one of 30 Trailblazer organisations leading the way with a formal commitment to provide measurable actions via its FIAP.

“I’m proud to say we are the first organization in the retail travel space to formally recognise the importance of improving the financial resilience of our people,” MD Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner said.

“Demonstrating that we take responsibility for the broader financial capabilities of our people is aligned to our core philosophies and helps us to attract the best people in the industry.”

In 2015, Australia committed to financial inclusion by agreeing to international obligations including the G20 Financial Inclusion Action Plan and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. As part of this commitment, the Australian Government appointed Good Shepherd Microfinance to develop a FIAP program.

Flight Centre joins 29 other well-known organisations including banks, law firms, charities and universities and collectively, these organisations employ more than 250,000 people and service 80% of the population.

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

Latest comments

Tom Nichols says:

April 30, 2018 at 9:45 am

Thanks Ali, I have sent an email with my contact details.

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Ali Coulton says:

April 26, 2018 at 3:50 pm

Thank you for sharing this, Tom. Would love to talk further about this with you, if you could contact me at alexandra@travelweekly.com.au that would be fantastic.

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Tom Nichols says:

April 17, 2018 at 12:57 pm

As an ex employee of Flight Centre I can say that any of these measures are merely for the public eye.

Flight Centre asked me to relocate from the UK in July 2016, at my own cost, and them providing sponsorship on a 457 visa.

I completed my relocation on May 23rd 2017 (at my own cost) and 12 working days later on the 8th of June 2017 was made redundant with no notice, and no reasonable assistance with regards to any of the costs of my relocation. As I’d only been legally employed 11 months, I got no entitlements.

I haven’t had the right to work in Australia since, and cannot afford a 2nd relocation. I was casually told “you’ll find another sponsor” by my manager, before being escorted off the premesis.

Sponsorship wait times are currently 5-11 months processing time, so not many places are interested in waiting that long for positions they are hiring for.

Flight Centres conduct throughout was and still is absolutely abhorrent, all whilst their public facing side continues to preach their “philosophy and values”, all of which were totally forgotten in my case.

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Naomi Zerner says:

April 11, 2018 at 11:44 am

I couldn’t agree with you more.

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Dana Brown says:

March 22, 2018 at 3:21 pm

How about they pay their staff what they are worth to begin with?

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